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[Story] Infixel: Layers of Truth

3/26/2019: Last time I made a thread it was about me asking for characters so that I could make a story about them. Although I haven't really added any and made my own characters, some will surely be added to the story as time passes and the characters grow. For now, enjoy the first three chapters, dropping today, tomorrow, and the day after.

Layers of Truth

The Amnesiac

It is midnight at the shores of the beaches in the city of Veldorama. Several stars gleam in the ever-beautiful night sky, with the moon accompanying them in shining the night. Crickets chirp in the distance, and there is barely any noise to be heard in the city except… from a half-naked teenager who just got washed up by the shore. He coughs up the saltwater in his body, and drags himself out of the water.

“What… the f- Where… am… I?”

He says as he fixes his dark blue hair with his hands. He has quite the pale skin, brown eyes, and also has visible cheekbones. His body is also muscular, having six-pack abs and muscles. His torn cargo pants are drenched along with his rubber shoes, colored brown and black respectively. He also has a bracelet made out of black pearls.

He tries to stand up, but because of his current exhausted condition, he can barely lift his own weight. He stops and looks around for people instead, only to find the beach with abandoned umbrellas and chairs. He looks past the beach and to the street lamps lighting up the seemingly lifeless roads. Only a few windows in the building are lit up, and the amount of lit windows is countable by hand.

Just as he was about to fall into despair, there goes a female coming from the left portion of the shoreline walks toward him. She wears a simplistic attire: a white cap with a yellow shirt and red shorts. She has a white skin (but not as white as the man), crimson hair tied in a ponytail, and eyes like fields of wheat. “Damn. Pretty rare to see some half-naked dude washed up these nights.”

“Help… me…” the boy says as he coughs up more saltwater.
“What do I gain from doing so?” she gives a smirk at the man.
“Please… just help… me”
“Why?”
“Just f***ing help me!” the man annoyingly shouts before he suddenly coughs up a big amount of saltwater. “Sorry… I didn’t mean to be vulgar.”
The girl smirks even more. “I’m just kidding. Of course I’d help you, I’m not an a-hole,”
“Thanks” the man says before falling into a sudden sleep.
“Well damn it, it would really help me if you were awake and helping yourself… but that isn’t really much of a problem…”8:00 AM, in a hut on the same beach.

The man wakes up lying on a sofa made out of bamboo, and notices that he is wrapped in a blanket. He checks out the pillows of the sofa and the blanket, and then tries to recall what happened. The girl from the other night serves a tray with two cups of iced coffee and places it on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The hut’s made out of bamboo and other natural materials, with no proper windows and doorway – only holes. There are paintings and such displayed and hanged on the walls, mostly about nature.

“I know you’re wondering how you got in this situation,” the girl sits down on a vacant sofa. “Trust me, I would too, considering a while ago you were just washed up on shore.”
“Of course I would be wondering how. But I’m also wondering why, where, when, and who,” the boy replies back as he looks at his body’s condition.
“Well… I’m not the one to wait, and I’m curious about your situation. Go ahead, ask,”
The boy looks around the hut and looks through the windows.
“Where am I?”
“A beach.”
“What beach?”
“I dunno.”
“WHAT?” his jaw drops suddenly as he exclaims in shock.
“I’m just kidding,” she smiles. “This is the Vermillion Resort. I own a portion of this resort, so bow down to me, peasant.”
“Quite the high position you got there, but that means nothing,” he says it with one of his eyebrows raised up. “Proceeding to the next question, who am I?”

An odd silence filled the room.

“You’ve got to be joking, right?” the girl says with a smirk in her face, but he could tell she’s shocked by looking at her eyes. “Don’t you know your own name? Your name which your parents gave you? Really?”

The boy bows his head in dismay as he stares on his palms, and then looks back at her.

Both of them stare to each other for a few seconds. Just for a few seconds, until the girl decides to look away from his gaze. “W-Why are you looking at me like that? Is that how you repay your kindness? By sta… staring at my… guh!” she then crosses her arms and looks at the customers enjoying themselves on the beach.
The boy’s eyes widen. “No-no! I didn’t look at you in that area! Pretty sure you stared into my ey- Oh for the love of the sea, I’m just going to continue!”

He looks at his bracelet on his arm. He feels… the sincerity and love on the pearl but at the same time… he feels the agony and treachery of one he held most dear. He can’t figure out the pieces, but it is what his instinct tells him. He thought to himself that this bracelet surely holds an important and dire memory for him, but he can’t remember. “Tsk… this truly is an excruciating situation… having to remember a memory which life forced you to forget.”

“It sucks. Not only do I not know my name, but I do not know the name of my parents. Worse, I don’t even know if I had parents that guided me. What if before I lost my memory, I was a troubled child? Now that I think about it, I could’ve been anyone in my previous life. All I know is that I’ve been washed up on the shore with no one to remember, no one to care for, and no one to love. I feel like I’m all alone… alone in my own life, alone with my mountain of questions ready for answering.”
The girl looked at him with her cap down, trying to cover her eyes. Yet her smile gave the impression of pity and sympathy, which can be easily read. “You’re not lonely in this world, dude.”
“What can you possibly mean by me being ‘not lonely’ in your opinion?”
“You got me, I guess. No big deal,”

The man’s eyes became filled with hope. His smile – even though it’s not much of a change – showed joy and gratefulness. The capped girl still covers her eyes, but leaves the smile exposed. “You would be willing to be a friend to a random stranger?” he asked with a suspicious voice.
“Of course not…” the girl stands up and moves beside the bamboo sofa, looking at the boy. “But you’re not some random stranger. You’re a dude who I could call Aquaman or Namor. My name is Elena Guinevere, and since I supposed you have to decide for yourself what’s your name,” she reaches out her hand to the resting boy.

The boy had to think for a few seconds before deciding a proper name for him. “You can call me Tristan Vermillion,” he reaches out to her hand and shakes it.
“Quite the name you got there, buddy,” she lets go of the hand. “Now… let’s see around his city whether we can find your missing memories and such.”

The Return

“So I’m guessing you’re getting a lot of money from the resort?” Tristan asks Elena, while he places his hands on the pants’ pockets (which Elena generously gave along with the shirt he’s wearing). Elena nods, wearing a red crop-top paired with dark blue skinny jeans. Her naturally-curled red hair is still in a ponytail, and she still wears the same cap from before. They both look at the sites while conversing, seeing the different business being busy with their respective customers in Neroshi Road.

“Not really. My parents manage the overall resort and not me, and I only receive about a 2000 a week,” she says as she looks down at the concrete sidewalk.
“2000? Isn’t that already excessive and enough to answer my question?” Tristan questions her.
“Hmm… maybe. I could already tell you must be really poor before you lost your memory.”
“I’m just saying the truth, Elena. 2000 per week is next level… considering that it’s DOLLARS.”
“It’s not dollars, dude,” she smirks with her arms crossed. “It’s UK pounds.”
“Seriously… that’s excessive money.”

A crunch can be heard when Tristan took a step, and when he looks at his foot, he notices a tree branch snapped in half. He then observes the surrounding people, looking at him with a fearful and terrified look. The women and men in their 30s covered their mouths as they shake in fear, and the children hid behind their legs also shaking in fear. It made him nervous and he was about to hide as well, but then an old man sitting on a bench in front of a shop shouted at him.

“Hey!” the old man shouted with his cane pointing at Tristan. “You better not be one of those snapping the tree branches out h-” the old man stopped when Tristan looks at him with a curious look, and he drops his candy cane as he crouches and covers his head. “No… no… no! PLEASE! SPARE ME! I DON’T WANT TO DIE YET!” the old man said with fear in his voice, confusing Tristan and Elena.

“What?” Tristan says in shock and nervousness.

“Ojisan… ojisan… it’s not polite for you to shout in front of someone when you’re talking to him,” a teenager with a long brown hair underneath a grey beanie. He wears a black shirt underneath a maroon-gray reversible parka jacket. He wears black pants and a hanging chain can be seen on his left pocket. Tristan looks at him with a mix of shock and relief, noticing that he isn’t as afraid as the people around him and the old man. The teenager looks at him with a cold look at first, and then reverts to being a calm look. “I’m assuming that we’ve never met before. Sorry about my ojisan, my name is Malcolm Dragonborn,” he says as he reaches his hand out to Tristan.

Tristan shakes his hand with Malcolm’s. “Ah, its fine, I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done.”
“You can never be forgiven after what you’ve done!” the old man shouts stuttering, still having fear.
“OJISAN! That’s not the proper way of treating strangers,” Malcolm scorns at his old man. “Anyway… what brings you walking here? A lot of people are looking at you, and I commend you for being so casual.”
“I honestly don’t know why they’re staring at me,” Tristan comments, and Malcolm sighs.
“I was about to ask you that too… anyway, is this your girlfriend?” Malcolm connotes.
“I don’t even know this dude personally,” Elena says as he points at Tristan.
“You look good together, you know.”
“…shut it.”
“Hehe,” Malcolm chuckles and faces back to Tristan. “Anyway… back to the question, what brings you strolling here?”
“I’ve been walking hoping that I could… uh… gain my memories back.”
“Your… what?” Malcolm shouts it, but reverts to his normal relaxed composure. “I’m sorry… are you a victim of amnesia?”
“Anesthesia?”
“No no, Amnesia. As in like, forgetting something before a certain event happens in your life.”
“That sounds like the definition of retrograde amnesia,” Elena adds in.
“I guess you can say I do have retrograde amnesia,” Tristan says. “And talking about doesn’t really help me remember my forgotten memories.”
“Wait… let’s take this discussion inside of our café,” Malcolm adds in, pointing at the big sign on top with the words Café Ambiguous. “I’ll serve you two free iced cappuccinos, my treat, since I don’t really see amnesiacs roaming around and being stared at,” he says as walks towards the café door and pushes it.

As they enter the café, the fragrance of coffee beans and different blends and brews of coffee fills the atmosphere. At the far end of the room there are the counters and the equipment to create the coffee, as well as the menu hanging on the wall, like a fastfood restaurant. There are circular white tables everywhere in the room, paired with matching white chairs with the brand logo placed on the support. On the left side of the room, a staircase is positioned which leads to the second floor of the café. There are many glass panes on the walls, giving way for the sunlight to enter at just the right amount. “Welcome to Café Ambiguous, monsieur,” Malcolm says as he points his left hand to an unoccupied table.

The three of them sit down and discuss about how to regain the memories of Tristan. Malcolm suggests showing pictures of different objects as well as listening to different genres of songs, whilst Elena insists of walking and observing the surroundings. While the two continue debating on which is more efficient, Tristan kept looking at the different furniture at the café. More specifically, the shelves that contained books of different genres such as fantasy and romance. He kept scanning the titles of the shelves: The Cask of Amontillado, A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, and… a book that reminded Tristan of something.

“The Lesser Key of Solomon…” Tristan muttered to himself. “Where have I heard that before?”

“Oh, it seems the bookshelf has gotten your attention!” Malcolm turns to Tristan, still looking at the shelf. “Yes, we do have the Lesser Key of Solomon, but it’s only like a repl-”
“Isn’t this a book that has demons like Astaroth, Asmodeus, Baal, and such?” Tristan asks.
“Yeah… why do you know about it? Do you study demonology?”
“I remember… one of the demons in the book is… Naberius, right? The demon which is depicted as the three-headed dog…” Tristan puts his hand on his forehead, leaning in for support. “My head hurts… it’s like I’m familiar with it but I’m not sure wh-”

A sudden flash of white light blinds Tristan and then all of a sudden... a memory surfaces.
“Please… spare my child! Take me only and not her!”

Tristan finds himself in an underground cave, but instead of common gray stones there are red metals instead. Crystals of black and dark crimson can be found on the walls and the ceiling, the stalactites and stalagmites gleam in the dim lit cave, and tiny magma streams flow from the walls as well. Laying on the floor powerless is a tall woman guarding her newborn child. She is battered and bruised, panicking while streams of tears flow from her eyes. One of her hands make a stop gesture while the other holds the newborn.

In front of the lady is a gigantic black three-headed German Shepherd, and riding it is a black-armored male covered in black flames. Tattoos can be found in his cheeks and hands, as his crimson red hair flows along with the flames. He smiles with bloodlust and malevolence, as he summons a massive, flaming black hand to grab the woman and the child at the same time. He commands the hand to bring them closer to him, before smiling one last time. “You are nothing but sources of strength for me. Now, give me your soul so I can be more powerful than I already am,” the male says.

“Let her go!” Tristan screams, but it’s no use. He sprints towards the German Shepherd, preparing to land a punch, but it fails as his fist phases through the legs of the dog. “What? How come...”

The woman and the newborn’s souls escape from their respective bodies in the form of ghosts, and the souls make their ways to the armored man’s mouth. As he digests the souls, his eyes and skin glow as the underground trembles. He laughs in malice as he looks at both of his hands. “A few souls are left before I can reach the rank of Midnight Shinigami. Once I achieve that, I can call myself the strongest in the underground!”
“Let’s be real here… you’re far from even achieving the Untouchable Hundred. You still got a long way to go if you want to be the king of the underground, much more to be the king of the surface,” the middle head of the dog says to the armored man, with the other two nodding in agreement. “Besides, comparing your experience to the king of the underground’s experience, the king has much more experience compared to you-”
“QUIET NABERIUS! You are lower than me, so therefore your opinion is not worthy of my time,” the armored man raises his hand and points to his left. “Go to that fortress nearby. I’m sure that’s a pretty powerful fortress considering the aura it emanates.”
“As you wish, master Volaria…” the dog Naberius turns to his left, while his rider looks at Tristan with a smug look, as if he could see him.
“Do not call me by my pseudonym, Naberius, I’ve already told you,” the armored man Volaria tells the dog. “Call me Tristan Vermillion, at least when no one's around.”

The original Tristan felt an electric shock on his brain when Volaria said those last words. He places both of his hands on his head, maintaining his composure while fighting back the pain on his mind. A few seconds later, the shock fades away slowly as he removes one of his hands from his head. He starts to sweat and panic as he repeats those words on his head.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” He screams out loud at the armored Volaria. “No… It can’t be… I can’t be this guy!”
“Let’s go, Naberius!” Volaria commands his ride as they both head away from the unnoticed Tristan.

Tristan wakes up on the same spot he was before: sitting on a chair and resting on the circular table. He looks around the café and most of what he sees is black flames blazing on different objects as well as the walls. The other tables and chairs are broken, the vases and other furniture are shattered, the equipment of the café scattered all around the area. The ceiling of the room has a gigantic hole in it, piercing through the second floor and the rooftop. Even the second floor suffered as much damage as the first, but fewer flames can be found.

On one corner of the room is Elena, emanating silver aura as well as controlling a silver liquid substance around her, like water. She looks shocked and terrified of Tristan, breathing heavily at the same time. On the other corner stands Malcolm, hands on his pockets. He has a stern face while being wrapped in orange flames, and suddenly dashes towards Tristan while turning slowly into a mix of a human and a dragon.

He grabs him by the collar with flaming hands, intentionally burning him, and gives him a look of vengeance. “Now I remember you! Black Flame Volaria, the one who killed the Dragonborn clan!”

3/26/2019: Last time I made a thread it was about me asking for characters so that I could make a story about them. Although I haven't really added any and made my own characters, some will surely be added to the story as time passes and the characters grow. For now, enjoy the first three chapters, dropping today, tomorrow, and the day after.

INFIXELLayers of Truth

The Amnesiac

It is midnight at the shores of the beaches in the city of Veldorama. Several stars gleam in the ever-beautiful night sky, with the moon accompanying them in shining the night. Crickets chirp in the distance, and there is barely any noise to be heard in the city except… from a half-naked teenager who just got washed up by the shore. He coughs up the saltwater in his body, and drags himself out of the water.

“What… the f- Where… am… I?”

He says as he fixes his dark blue hair with his hands. He has quite the pale skin, brown eyes, and also has visible cheekbones. His body is also muscular, having six-pack abs and muscles. His torn cargo pants are drenched along with his rubber shoes, colored brown and black respectively. He also has a bracelet made out of black pearls.

He tries to stand up, but because of his current exhausted condition, he can barely lift his own weight. He stops and looks around for people instead, only to find the beach with abandoned umbrellas and chairs. He looks past the beach and to the street lamps lighting up the seemingly lifeless roads. Only a few windows in the building are lit up, and the amount of lit windows is countable by hand.

Just as he was about to fall into despair, there goes a female coming from the left portion of the shoreline walks toward him. She wears a simplistic attire: a white cap with a yellow shirt and red shorts. She has a white skin (but not as white as the man), crimson hair tied in a ponytail, and eyes like fields of wheat. “Damn. Pretty rare to see some half-naked dude washed up these nights.”

“Help… me…” the boy says as he coughs up more saltwater.
“What do I gain from doing so?” she gives a smirk at the man.
“Please… just help… me”
“Why?”
“Just f***ing help me!” the man annoyingly shouts before he suddenly coughs up a big amount of saltwater. “Sorry… I didn’t mean to be vulgar.”
The girl smirks even more. “I’m just kidding. Of course I’d help you, I’m not an a-hole,”
“Thanks” the man says before falling into a sudden sleep.
“Well damn it, it would really help me if you were awake and helping yourself… but that isn’t really much of a problem…”8:00 AM, in a hut on the same beach.

The man wakes up lying on a sofa made out of bamboo, and notices that he is wrapped in a blanket. He checks out the pillows of the sofa and the blanket, and then tries to recall what happened. The girl from the other night serves a tray with two cups of iced coffee and places it on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The hut’s made out of bamboo and other natural materials, with no proper windows and doorway – only holes. There are paintings and such displayed and hanged on the walls, mostly about nature.

“I know you’re wondering how you got in this situation,” the girl sits down on a vacant sofa. “Trust me, I would too, considering a while ago you were just washed up on shore.”
“Of course I would be wondering how. But I’m also wondering why, where, when, and who,” the boy replies back as he looks at his body’s condition.
“Well… I’m not the one to wait, and I’m curious about your situation. Go ahead, ask,”
The boy looks around the hut and looks through the windows.
“Where am I?”
“A beach.”
“What beach?”
“I dunno.”
“WHAT?” his jaw drops suddenly as he exclaims in shock.
“I’m just kidding,” she smiles. “This is the Vermillion Resort. I own a portion of this resort, so bow down to me, peasant.”
“Quite the high position you got there, but that means nothing,” he says it with one of his eyebrows raised up. “Proceeding to the next question, who am I?”

An odd silence filled the room.

“You’ve got to be joking, right?” the girl says with a smirk in her face, but he could tell she’s shocked by looking at her eyes. “Don’t you know your own name? Your name which your parents gave you? Really?”

The boy bows his head in dismay as he stares on his palms, and then looks back at her.

Both of them stare to each other for a few seconds. Just for a few seconds, until the girl decides to look away from his gaze. “W-Why are you looking at me like that? Is that how you repay your kindness? By sta… staring at my… guh!” she then crosses her arms and looks at the customers enjoying themselves on the beach.
The boy’s eyes widen. “No-no! I didn’t look at you in that area! Pretty sure you stared into my ey- Oh for the love of the sea, I’m just going to continue!”

He looks at his bracelet on his arm. He feels… the sincerity and love on the pearl but at the same time… he feels the agony and treachery of one he held most dear. He can’t figure out the pieces, but it is what his instinct tells him. He thought to himself that this bracelet surely holds an important and dire memory for him, but he can’t remember. “Tsk… this truly is an excruciating situation… having to remember a memory which life forced you to forget.”

“It sucks. Not only do I not know my name, but I do not know the name of my parents. Worse, I don’t even know if I had parents that guided me. What if before I lost my memory, I was a troubled child? Now that I think about it, I could’ve been anyone in my previous life. All I know is that I’ve been washed up on the shore with no one to remember, no one to care for, and no one to love. I feel like I’m all alone… alone in my own life, alone with my mountain of questions ready for answering.”
The girl looked at him with her cap down, trying to cover her eyes. Yet her smile gave the impression of pity and sympathy, which can be easily read. “You’re not lonely in this world, dude.”
“What can you possibly mean by me being ‘not lonely’ in your opinion?”
“You got me, I guess. No big deal,”

The man’s eyes became filled with hope. His smile – even though it’s not much of a change – showed joy and gratefulness. The capped girl still covers her eyes, but leaves the smile exposed. “You would be willing to be a friend to a random stranger?” he asked with a suspicious voice.
“Of course not…” the girl stands up and moves beside the bamboo sofa, looking at the boy. “But you’re not some random stranger. You’re a dude who I could call Aquaman or Namor. My name is Elena Guinevere, and since I supposed you have to decide for yourself what’s your name,” she reaches out her hand to the resting boy.

The boy had to think for a few seconds before deciding a proper name for him. “You can call me Tristan Vermillion,” he reaches out to her hand and shakes it.
“Quite the name you got there, buddy,” she lets go of the hand. “Now… let’s see around his city whether we can find your missing memories and such.”

I loathe your idea, but this chapter has some weirdness. Hopefully the upcoming chapters would give some sense.